Dental hygiene and tooth maintenance is a very important part of everyday life. Healthy teeth are not only aesthetically pleasing, but are also a necessary and vital part of our daily routine of food consumption. A full set of teeth allow us to chew our food to aid in the digestive process, thus we place a high emphasis on dental care to retain as many of our natural teeth as possible. However, over the centuries, humans have been contending with the loss of some or all of their teeth as a result of accidents, injuries, or oral disease, and the loss of teeth remains a problem to this day in spite of the advances of modern dental medicine. Since the human body does not naturally replace missing teeth, dental prosthetics have been developed to provide artificial teeth.
Dental prosthetics, also known as dental appliances, have been utilized for centuries, starting with crude ill fitting dentures made of wood or bone. These initial attempts at dental prosthetics, while an improvement over having no teeth, suffered from the problem of retention, or more specifically, how well the denture is prevented from moving in the vertical plane in the opposite direction of insertion. Initially, retention of mandibular (lower) dentures and more particularly maxillary (upper) dentures relied on conforming the interior surface of the denture to closely mimic the topographical contours of the portion of the mouth in which the dentures were to be retained. For the dentures that relied solely on matching the contour of the mouth and more specifically the mucosa that underlies the dentures, retention relied on the forces of surface tension, suction, plain old friction, and even adhesives to keep the dentures from becoming dislodged. Dentures that relied solely on these forces, while greatly restoring aesthetics, restored only a small portion of the person's original tooth function for biting and chewing. Further, after a person has used dentures for a time period, the underlying bone in the person's jaw, and more specifically the alveolar bone in which the teeth normally reside, has tended to shrink and atrophy thereby causing well fitting dentures to now become ill fitting dentures with an undesirable decrease in retention.
Full dentures are only a part of the dental prosthetic universe. Other forms of dental prosthetics include partial dentures and fixed and removable bridges. Fixed bridges are permanently affixed to neighboring teeth and do not need to be removed on a regular basis. However, full dentures, partial dentures, and removable bridges do need to be removed on a regular basis for cleaning and for personal hygienic reasons. Food particles can become lodged in the areas between a person's natural teeth and the prosthetic or even between the mucosa and the prosthetic. Some partials and removable bridges can be held in place with stainless steel wires that are closely formed to the interior surfaces of adjoining teeth and are then anchored to the teeth utilizing a clasp formed with the wire such as a ball clasp which engages an undercut formed by two adjacent teeth.
As the practice of dental prosthetics has progressed over the years through scientific discovery, experimentation and innovation, researchers have made some important discoveries. One of the discoveries is that the forces of biting and chewing which are normally transferred by the teeth to the alveolar bone is the mechanism by which the alveolar bone is maintained in good health, and that the absence of those directly transferred forces is what causes the atrophying of the bone. Thus, implants have now become an accepted practice for introducing dental prosthetics to replace missing teeth. An implant is usually a post that is embedded in the alveolar bone, and after a healing period the dental prosthetic is attached to it. A single implant can be utilized to support one missing tooth, or two or more implants can support a partial denture, removable bridge, or even a full denture. The implants greatly improve the retention factor by the inclusion of a clasping mechanism between the post/implant and the prosthetic device.
In addition to dental prosthetics, there are a wide range of dental and oral appliances that are frequently used to enhance dental aesthetics and protection which also require strong retention and safe removal. For instance, orthodontic advances have produced retainers and products to adjust the placement of teeth such as INVISALIGN® that must tightly fit the user's teeth, and yet also must be removable. Cosmetic appliances such as bleaching trays which are used in the tooth whitening process must fit the teeth well enough to keep the whitening agents in contact with the teeth and yet be removable once treatment is complete. Other cosmetic appliances such as SNAP-ON SMILE® and ANGELLIFT® must also fit tightly in the mouth of a user in order to provide the desired aesthetic appearance. Dental protection appliances such as sports mouth guards for use by athletes, and night guards and bite splints which are used to prevent grinding away of tooth enamel during sleep, are molded to fit the teeth of the user and yet must be removable. Even oral appliances used in treating disorders such as sleep apnea, snoring, and tempromandibular joint (TMJ) disorder must also fit the teeth tightly in order to remain in place and be effective and yet still must be removable.
Advances in technology have yielded new dental and oral products, as well as new methods of creating these products. These new methods have led to the development of more accurately fitting dental appliances and oral products, with increased retention over their predecessors. Concurrent with these advances in oral device retention are the problems of removal for those devices that are meant to be removed on a regular basis for cleaning and oral hygiene. Whether the retention is that of suction, surface tension and adhesive forces on an upper maxillary denture or the forces required to overcome the mechanical clasping of a partial denture on implants, the increased retention forces of today's prosthetics and oral devices also increases the removal forces required to dislodge them. Often the wearer's options for removal of the device are grasping the device and pulling, or alternatively, attempting to hook a fingernail on an edge of the device and applying force to dislodge the device. Neither of these methods is desirable, since grasping forces on the device are often countered by the presence of saliva or other viscous compounds on the device. Likewise, attempting to hook a fingernail behind a feature of the device can cause injury to the underlying mucosa with the risk of infection and prolonged discomfort until the injured tissue heals. This problem is particularly acute among the elderly, frail and disabled who are also the ones most likely to use dental prosthetics and appliances. The difficulty of removal often results in these users leaving the appliances or devices in and thus forgoing the cleaning and oral hygiene required for good dental health.
Thus what is desired is a dental instrument to aid in the removal of dental prosthetics and oral devices to overcome the retention forces of the dental device whether by suction, implants, or wire clasps.